– Salesforce chief Marc Benioff told Insider that he went on a digital detox in October and December.
– Benioff has previously stated that he is “addicted” to his devices and that the trip was “free”.
– Benioff told Insider that he took time away from Salesforce before the company announced layoffs in January.
In the months before the layoffs rocked Salesforce, CEO Marc Benioff visited French Polynesia for a break that included a “digital detox,” he told Insider.
A digital detox is a trend in which someone gives up using digital devices, such as phones or computers, for a period of time — often with the intention of feeling more present and less dependent on social media.
An earlier report from The New York Times seemed to suggest he made the trip the month Salesforce announced layoffs, but Benioff told Insider that report was inaccurate.Salesforce announced layoffs in January.
In an earlier interview with the Times, Benioff commented on his reasoning for taking a break from his devices.
“We’re so addicted to our devices (at least I am) that it’s so freeing to leave them all behind for a while!” he messaged The Times in a series of interviews.
Benioff’s digital detox offers an interesting look at how tech CEOs can seek a temporary period of quiet, without digital communication.
The next month was not a quiet one for Salesforce.
On January 4, Benioff announced that Salesforce planned to cut about 10% of its 84,000 employees in the coming weeks.
In a letter to employees, Benioff blamed layoffs at the company that hired too many people during the pandemic as “accelerated revenue” and took “responsibility” for hiring people leading to the current “economic downturn.”
The news prompted confusion and questions about Benioff from employees, but the executive did not answer questions about the layoffs in a two-hour meeting with employees the next day, Insider reported.Most of Salesforce’s employees were confused about when the layoffs would come and for whom, according to Slack messages reviewed by Insider.
At the all-hands call the day after the layoffs, Benioff compared the loss of workers to layoffs to mourning people who have died.Insider reported that he showed up about 18 minutes late to a company-wide meeting the day after the layoffs were announced and then, The Times of London reported, joked, “Did I miss something?”
He told the NYT that he now thinks the two-hour all-hands call was a bad idea.
“We were trying to explain the unexplainable,” Benioff told the NYT.“It’s difficult to have a call like that with such a large group and be effective, and we paid a price.”
After Salesforce began laying off workers, more than 500 employees sent a letter to management expressing “isolation from a lack of information” and asking questions such as why some managers were not involved or had no knowledge of the first round of layoffs and whether the cuts had any relationship with Salesforce’s activist investors.
Salesforce continued its planned layoffs in February, with one person telling Insider it was a “bloodbath” for sales and marketing employees.It’s unclear how many people have been laid off to date, but one person told Insider that 4,000 people were missing from Slack after Jan.
31, but could include contractors laid off after the end of the fiscal year.
The cuts at Salesforce come as many tech companies, from Google to Meta to Microsoft, have shed their employee bases by the thousands — with possibly more cuts on the horizon as executives try to cut costs after business booms from the pandemic .
Correction, February 18: This article has been updated to reflect Benioff’s comment about the timing of his digital detox, which he said happened in the months before Salesforce announced its layoffs, not during or after the job cuts.
Are you a Salesforce employee or have information to share? Contact Ashley Stewart via email ([email protected]) or send a secure message from a non-working device via Signal (+1-425-344-8242)..
